High school sports: Hearing on realignment offers no easy answers

The east/west alignment is: Region 1: Same as above; Region 2: Cottonwood, West, Taylorsville, West Jordan, Granger and Hunter; Region 3: Lehi, Westlake, Riverton, Herriman, Bingham, Copper Hills; Region 4: Lone Peak, Pleasant Grove, American Fork, Alta, Jordan and Brighton. This option leaves Hillcrest, which is on the bubble between 4A and 5A, in 4A.

Iron County Superintendent Jim Johnson asked that Cedar and Canyon View not be separated from their decades-long rivals in the St. George area in everything but football. The two schools were placed in a region with Juab, North Sanpete and Richfield in all sports but football.

"We've worked hard to develop a region down there," he said. "I felt a bit blindsided that the Cedar City schools were placed in a region with schools other than the St. George Schools."

He said the district also opposed being in a five-team region as that created issues in trying to find non-region games to fill schedules.

Johnson asked the board to consider placing Canyon View in 3A, rather than 3AA with the other St. George schools, because it has struggled to compete at that level. Canyon View hasn't beaten another St. George school in football in 11 years, he said.

Steve Hess of Cyprus, and Maile Loo of Kearns, proposed a completely different configuration for 4A. Region 5 would be: Bonneville, Box Elder, Logan, Mountain Crest, Ogden, Roy and Sky View; Region 6: Bountiful, Clearfield, Olympus, Skyline, Kearns, Cyprus, Woods Cross and Murray; Region 7: Corner Canyon, Hillcrest, Mountain View, East, Highland, Orem, Timpanogos and SPA (Salt Lake Performing Arts); Region 8: Maple Mountain Provo, Payson, Salem Hills, Spanish Fork, Springville, Timpview and Wasatch.

Rowland Hall and Waterford made a joint presentation asking that the two private schools trade places with Gunnison and either Summit Academy or Maeser Prep allowing them to stay with the Summit County schools that are now in their region.

A 1A proposal seaparated one of the four regions into a north and south division to ease travel concerns and make region play more manageable. In that proposal, Concordia, ICS, Legacy, Mt. Vernon and St. Joseph would be the North Division and Dugway, Oakley, Tintic, Wendover, West Ridge, Eskdale, USDB and West Desert would make up the south.

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